About
I've spent most of my working life being creative. Thirty years in professional theatre — the West End, national tours, cruise ships, concert halls, and pantomime every Christmas. Les Misérables, Phantom, Beauty and the Beast. The Royal Albert Hall, Wembley, the O2.
Applause is always nice, but, it was the creating and making of the piece that counted. Taking something and steering it, developing it, working at it until it became something beautiful and meaningful that people could see the work in. That's the part I wasn't ready to give up.
I've always been drawn to craft. I'm the one standing at a market stall turning something over, trying to work out how it was made. For years there was never time for more than that. Then a friend in her senior years had a house full of old furniture and 1930s pieces gathering dust, and I started asking what else they could be. A brass tank from behind an old fireplace became a lamp. Old pallets became an arbour she could sit in. I hand-carved small pieces of wood with a craft knife. In between I was painting watercolours and working with charcoal, trying to capture light and shade — it was always there in my mind.
About eighteen months ago I bought a small engraving pen, just as a hobby. The thought of working with my hands and wood was so interesting, and I could see endless possibilities. But a pen can only do so much. I wanted bigger, better, more technology — more to help me realise a piece. Looking for materials, I kept coming across laser machines, and once I started reading what they were capable of my mind flew off into the world of imagination.
So I bought the best laser I could for wood and slate, and The Lumière Studio started.
It's taken serious funds and a great deal of learning, and I'm still learning with every new piece. In some ways a gamble. In others, a chance to start again doing something I love.
The work itself hasn't changed as much as you'd think. Light and shade is what gives a piece its feeling — that was true under stage lighting and it's true burning an image into stone. And composition is everything. I'm looking for the details that make someone unmistakably themselves, the bits that bring a person or a pet to life, then rendering them in a way that's more than a copy of the photograph...and that's the point. Not a reproduction — a lasting memory. Something that when it's opened, moves you. Takes you back to a place and a time only you can connect to.
A part of me goes out with every order.
Richard
